Community Advocate | Lived-Experience Advisor | Nonprofit Professional

Natalie is a mother of four, community advocate, and nonprofit professional whose work is shaped by her lived experience of navigating homelessness, housing instability, and complex social-service systems.

After experiencing homelessness with her children and working to rebuild stability, Natalie transformed her personal journey into a commitment to social advocacy. She uses her experience to bring greater understanding to the challenges faced by families navigating homelessness and to encourage systems and service providers to listen more closely to the people directly affected by their decisions.

Natalie is associated with Lived Experience Advisors, a nonprofit organization that prepares people with lived experience to become advocates, consultants, speakers, and community leaders. Through trauma-informed training, advocates learn how to support others, navigate difficult systems, establish healthy boundaries, and care for their own emotional well-being.

She is also a co-host of What’s Your Shift SD, a community podcast created by women with lived experience in homelessness, recovery, nonprofit work, and advocacy. The podcast creates space for honest conversations about rebuilding life, navigating civic and social systems, community needs, personal agency, and meaningful change.

At TALTalks 2026, Natalie will present:

“Surviving Homelessness with Children: Rebuilding Stability and Breaking the System Loop”

Through her talk, Natalie will share the realities of experiencing homelessness as a mother, the barriers families encounter while navigating support systems, and the difficult process of rebuilding stability. She will also explore how system loops can keep families in crisis and why lived experience must be included in the design of more compassionate and effective community solutions.

Her story reflects resilience, dignity, and the power of turning personal hardship into advocacy that can help others.

About Lived Experience Advisors

Lived Experience Advisors is a grassroots nonprofit organization that equips people with lived experience of homelessness and trauma to become effective advocates, consultants, public speakers, and community leaders.

Its trauma-informed approach prepares advocates to engage compassionately with others while also protecting their own emotional health. Training includes understanding trauma, navigating complex systems, maintaining boundaries, practising self-care, and using lived experience to influence community conversations and improve services.

By ensuring that people directly affected by homelessness have a meaningful voice in policy, programs, and public dialogue, Lived Experience Advisors helps communities create more informed, dignified, and responsive solutions.